Tolerance for the intolerant???

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"Fake outrage and blustering grandstanding! How hard is it to just admit to the framed question trap that I've set up for you! I've already set the stage by implying that any infringement of free speech is fascist censorship, so just step into the trap so I can unleash the slippery slope argument already! Sheesh! How hard is it to hit the mark on such an obvious trap?! Just fall into it already!"

If it'll get you to stop seething and foaming, I'll say it. Some speech should be censored, restricted, prohibited, whatever scary boogeyman word floats your boat. There. Happy? You can start bleating about slippery slopes and government overreach whenever you want. But I don't see you writhing in the grip of fascism while you're here on WP, where there's ever so much restriction about what you can or can't say. As much as cEnSoRsHiP "outrages" you, you do a fine job of obediently obeying the rules when you come here.

A paradox. If you believe in unrestricted free speech, than you should be perfectly ok with people using their free speech to express their belief that some speech should not be free, even if it is ironic. Because free speech. If your counter argument is that you're just exercising your free speech to criticize them, as is your right under free speech, then they also still have their right to counter argue your points, right or wrong, at which point you have the freedom to respond, to which they can freely respond... and so on... and so on...

Another paradox. Unrestricted free speech is ok, even if it is intolerant. And if tolerance is so important, they should also tolerate the intolerant. Yet at that point, the intolerance of the intolerance is not being tolerated - but it should be, because even the intolerant should be tolerated. Therefore the initial tolerance is ok, but the intolerance to that intolerance is now bad... it's like the rules change based on who they favor. If you truly believe in total free speech, surely you can tolerate speech you dislike, as you seem to expect others to do. Or is this like the bully-bully paradox, where if someone doesn't believe in bullying, then they also shouldn't try to force the bully to stop - but they bully clearly does believe in bullying, so it's ok for them to bully, cos at least their moral code is consistent, and if someone tries to stop the bully they're LITERALLY JUST AS BAD as the bully for trying to stop the bully.

And anyways, the supreme court of the united states has ruled on multiple occasions that there are limits to free speech. In that regard, you can believe whatever you want about free speech and how you think it should work, but that doesn't mean that is how it works.

Side note - it's hilarious how fast advocates of the first amendment fall in love with the fifth amendment when you press them for details. "You can't silence me! You can't make me talk! Nothing is more important than free speech! Observe, as I now become silent!"

Oh right.

So you wouldn't defend your own family if they were being physically attacked? "You want to rape my mother? Well I don't agree with what you're doing, but I can't stop you, so step right in".

And you wouldn't fight in a war to defend your nation against an aggressive and clearly unhinged dictator? (Godwin's Law prevents me from mentioning the most obvious example). Even if that effectively makes you a sympathiser to their cause and thus their atrocities?

And you don't believe the Police or the Army should ever use force? Because it's NEVER appropriate?

Interesting.

Last edited by Redd_Kross on 02 May 2021, 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The only problem I have is that everybody seems to have different definitions of “intolerance”.

For some, it’s the most militant and extreme of the extreme of a given ideology.

For others, it could be anything to the right of the Squad.

It's complicated because to get the moderate, nice benefits on each side of the debate also means exposing yourself to some pretty nasty extremes.

Freedom of speech has some fantastic benefits but also some massive risks. Same with censorship.

Trying to get the best of both worlds is the game most societies play, with laws relating to obscenity, hate speech, violence and so forth.

Absolutism in either direction doesn't work. It's basically a microcosm of extreme political beliefs, whereby complete freedom of speech is anarchy and complete censorship is totalitarianism. Neither is going to work very well.

I am totally fine with intolorating the intolerance.

BTW there is a difference between being a nice person and acting nice. Someone can be an as*hole but be very nice and kind to you while they treat other people horribly.

No one ever said that. It's that the right wing say the left are intolerant of other peoples views. But however the views the left tend to be intolorant of but not limited to is racism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia.

Honestly, I think most people sometimes act nice or at least polite to people they don't really like in order to avoid conflict. I know I do, and I don't think it's all that bad of a thing. Being polite and saying good morning to someone even though I don't like the person doesn't hurt me or that other person.

I wasn't responding to your posts in the first place. But thanks for clarifying your position, even if such a long-winded post was entirely unnecessary.

A "dispute" is not the same as a violent attack.

And not in a good way because we will overcorrect for that.

This is the best post of this and similar threads. The problem is all of these cost benefit analysis involve the inexact art of predicting the future. I do not believe in absolute free speech but I do believe in erring on the side of not censoring and think American society is too censorious and moving into more censorship at a speed I find very distressing.

Erring on the side of non censorship is often very hard. If one takes to the level I prefer besides the risks it does involve tolorating what deserves to be intolerable. We all have our triggers that will make the most anti censorship among us hypocrites at times. The thing to do is to be a aware of this problem and try and minimize it.

Overall I think delineating between Hate Speech and Hate Crime is the way to go despite the issues that raises.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 03 May 2021, 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

Are you saying a violent attack isn't a dispute? Because if so, you are wrong. Disputes can be trivial and aren't always violent, but violent disagreements are definitely disputes.

That's the point here - to cover the soft option you also have to open yourself up to the worst case scenario.

It's a word trap, because that breadth of possibilities means you'd never risk answering simply yes or no. It becomes all about context. That's true the other way round too. If you'd answered yes (thinking about standing up to bullies, for example) I could easily leap in with "Oh, so you believe in punching babies, then?".

It's exactly the same with the freedom of speech debate. We all want the best of everything with none of the problems. Freedom of speech but with no unwarranted trauma, deception, manipulation, or threat. But the pros and cons on each side can't be separated out.

Hence compromise is inevitable. And a yes / no debate is unrealistic.

You're correct about the defintion of the word "dispute."

However, I still vehemently disagree with your position regarding censoring hate speech.

I haven't been allowed to put forward a particular position regarding hate speech, as opposed to any other form of speech, because you wouldn't let me. Remember?

If you want to be binary about it, then saying yes to free speech means accepting every possible outcome it might cause. No context, caveats, distinctions. I'd be completely within my rights to announce that all Nurses should be shot (for no particular reason). I could schedule Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Busty Anal Beauties 3 on a kid's TV channel at 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. And I could announce to WP that VegetableMan is a convicted paedophile and animal abuser, whether I have any evidence of that or not. I mean, why not just make stuff up?

In the past I think it was pretty well understood that freedom of speech did not mean freedom from consequences. If anyone wanted to run their mouth in a deliberately destructive way they'd be held to account for it. Yes you can say and do as you please but you're responsible for dealing with the outcomes. That's changed though.

Social media gives an open platform to psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, sadists, contrarians, jokers, political extremists and above all idiots - lots and lots of idiots - to spew forth their malicious, stupid or exploitative ideas with virtually no chance of any payback. And there's no easy way of distinguishing who is accurate in this sea of mostly half-baked nonsense. Which means in the long run the most radical and dangerous of ideas become just as credible as the most innocuous. There's so much white noise that many people simply lose the ability to pick out what's accurate, reasonable or at the very least, likely.

Even when the real tinfoil hat stuff gets exposed as nonsense, there's the cover-all counter arguement of "well, of course it sounds ridiculous, that's exactly what THEY want you to think!". And frustratingly while that's BS 99.9% of the time, it always retains a sliver of credibility, because we know that politicians, public servants and Government agencies do sometimes lie.

We're in a world now that's probably better described as post-cynical rather than postmodern.

When you have media talking heads inciting civil unrest and racial hatred and then their defence in Court is, "It's clearly entertainment, people cannot honestly believe that I meant what I was saying", accountability has gone. When you have the President and his followers repeatedly lying and being unable to provide any evidence in support of their claims in Court, yet they are left free to continue lying, that takes free speech into very dangerous territory indeed.

At that point it's become more dangerously anti-democratic than moderate and well-reasoned censorship would be, in my view.

Even though, when taken to extremes, I think I'd still rather have complete freedom of speech than complete censorship. My point is that either would be catastrophic, I just happen to think one would be even more catastrophic than the other. Both have the potential to be very harmful indeed.

Fortunately, though, there are a huge range of compromise positions inbetween, and Western democracies use a range of them over towards the "generally in favour of freedom of speech, but not crazily so" side.

Last edited by Redd_Kross on 03 May 2021, 1:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

What is called a dispute is, by implication, nonviolent most of the time.

The term "dispute" is a very general term, and can have many presentations when one seeks to illustrate the definition.

We have disputes here all the time; are we beating each other up?

Obviously, a "violent dispute" is a type of dispute.